I heard a lot of ranting Wednesday, and I think people need to take a deep breath and think about just what happened.

Before I get into why this result is not a sign that the system needs to change, let’s start by clearing up one misconception:

The Hall of Fame board of directors decides who votes for the Hall of Fame, not the BBWAA. There seem to be a lot of folks out there who think the BBWAA is this exclusionary group bent on keeping broadcasters, players and fans from having a say in the process. It’s just not true. If the board of directors of the Hall decided tomorrow they wanted someone else to vote, they could. At the moment, they have decided the BBWAA is the best body to vote. So if you don’t like it, direct your complaints to them. Not the BBWAA.

That being said, I have no problem with any other groups participating. I’m happy to let someone else absorb some of the abuse.

Because I don’t think the results would have been any different if anyone else would have voted.

This shutout was because of steroids, period. The most deserving candidates on the ballot, the only ones whose statistical accomplishments were without question, were all tainted to varying degrees by steroids.

Over the past weeks I’ve heard a lot of opinions on the steroids issue from different groups — players, fans, broadcasters, writers — and they are all divided. There simply is no consensus on this issue, even if some individuals think they know the right answer.

So I tend to agree with what Hall of Fame president Jeff Idelson said Wednesday when he was asked about including other groups in the selection process: “Any group you leave this up to would have the same issues.”

If you look at the players on the ballot separate from the steroid issue, none were no-brainers. The best of them, Craig Biggio, was a guy who was very good for a long time, but never dominant. He was the third best second baseman of his era. You can make a case for him, and you can make a case against him.

And he got 68 percent of the vote … more than two-thirds. In politics, that’s called a landslide.

It just so happens that he needed 75 percent, which is a very high threshold.*

* If people simply want to see more players in the Hall of Fame, then what needs to be changed is the 75-percent rule, not the composition of the voters. I submit that a panel of broadcasters or players or fans or people whose name starts with M would have just as much trouble finding a 75-percent consensus on this ballot. That being said, the practical threshold is already more like 60 percent, because guys who get to that mark in a single year have historically made it eventually. So in that respect, the 75 percent line is just like a traffic light on a freeway on-ramp, ensuring that the Hall of Famers are admitted on a steady, trickle, rather than in big clumps. Isn’t it better that guys get their year to shine, shared with only one or maybe two others, instead of six guys going in at once?

As for Biggio, he got more than two-thirds of the vote in his first time on the ballot, and history tells us that guys who do that get into the Hall of Fame. You can count on it. Don’t cry for him. His party was merely delayed, not canceled.

It could happen next year, when he may be elected alongside sure-thing Greg Maddux, possibly with Jack Morris or Frank Thomas or Tom Glavine. If three or four guys get enshrined next year, won’t all this criticism of the BBWAA seem silly?

Now, the BBWAA system is not perfect.

It’s true there are voters who don’t cover baseball any more. There are voters who cast odd, almost indefensible ballots. But it’s still a relatively small percentage out of nearly 600 voters. One of the things that is great about the baseball system, as opposed to other sports, is the voting pool is large enough that the weird outliers and voters with biases have their impact minimized by the sheer numbers.

It would actually be better, I think, to open the voting to more writers. If the 10-year requirement were reduced to, say, seven, then the voting pool would include more active writers to decrease the voting power of the retired writers who haven’t been around the game as much.

I also wouldn’t object to adding broadcasters and former players, although I have no idea who would pick them.

The more the merrier. The worst thing we could do is cut it down to a committee-like system where the biases of every individual would be magnified and the standards could change dramatically from year to year based on the composition of the group. The mere act of picking the committee would be a whole other politicized process, like a nomination for the Supreme Court.

So I’m OK with adding more voices to the process, not less, but I think the results would be the same.

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